On November 30, 1864 Colonel W.D. Gale participated in the Battle of Franklin and burying the large number of Confederate dead that filled the battlefield. He wrote a letter home to his wife, describing the battle and the Confederate hospital where he visited his wounded comrades. In the Battle of Franklin, the Confederate Army of Tennessee went on the offensive striking the Union army entrenched...

The battle of Petersburg is remembered as one of the most destructive of the war. Petersburg can be considered the last stand of the Army of Northern Virginia. After months of maneuvering and fighting, Grant had finally forced Lee into defending Richmond itself. Before this the campaign had consisted of Lee moving to block Grant’s advances, trading ground for time. Now there was no more...

In his official report, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pleasants of the 48th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers wrote that the mine dug under the Confederate trenches outside Petersburg exploded at sixteen minutes to five, on the morning of July 30, 1864. The Quartermaster sergeant of the 48th Pennsylvania, Joseph Gould, wrote his history of the regiment, "It [the explosion] was a magnificent...

During the Civil War, many freed slaves and young men were abducted from their families, and purchased by the Union in order to replace men who sought to avoid warfare for various reasons. In 1863, a widow by the name of Mrs. Catherine Garvin of Troy, New York, was informed that her son, Cornelius, was missing. In efforts to connect with her lost son, Mrs. Garvin not only searched the camps and...

On the night of August 15, 1864, a woman sought lodging at a station house in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This was no ordinary woman. Frances Clayton told her story to Officer Rand, who then recounted it to the Fort Wayne Daily Gazette the next day. In 1861, Clayton enlisted in the Union Army of Missouri under the alias Jack Williams, with her husband. She fought in eighteen battles, serving in...

In July of 1864 the privateer Florida captured six Union ships along the Coast below Cape May, New Jersey. Captain Morris was in charge of this black-painted vessel and its 155 man crew. The ship itself mounted eight guns and all of the crew were armed with revolvers and cutlasses. The Florida had three flags, the United States flag, the Confederate flag, and...

In his report dated December 16, 1864, Chaplain Lorenzo Barber’s brigade had just finished what he called the destruction of “one of the most important railroads in the so-called Confederacy.” But even with his reputation as “one of the best shots in the army” and the nickname of “The Fighting Parson,” Barber revealed the inner struggle he felt as a minister and a soldier when he...

Michael Sutton was enlisted in the 51st Regiment of North Carolina, and was wounded at Cool Arbor. He was treated at a hospital in Wilmington in 1864. He received adequate care, but the experience was not a positive one. The meals were not always good, and the hospital was rather stinted for food. His rations for four days included one pound of bacon and eighteen ounces of cornmeal, and daily half...

On a cold night in November 1864, an anonymous prisoner, who referred to himself as "John Paul Brown" in Boston's Dollar Monthly Magazine, assumed the guise of a carriage driver, hijacked a parked supply wagon carrying vegetables, and, "with an artistic flourish of the whip, drove through the opened gates, unrecognized and unchallenged." Several days previously, his accomplice, whom...

Both Union and Confederate leaders knew that a decisive battle at Petersburg could mean a decisive battle of the war; but, it is unlikely that Union leaders would have guessed that their best chance for victory would depend on constructing a mineshaft. There was a lot riding on the outcome of Petersburg, Virginia. Bryce Suderow, a Civil War historian, explains the Union’s...